When you stare long enough into the abyss, it stares back at you. The iCarly gang only thought they were up to date on Internet culture, but one day they experienced the true horrors of the cyber world they thought loved them. Now everything is falling apart.

Endless rain pummeled the concrete roof of the Shays' apartment building on that unforgettable, unforgivable night. It seemed fitting. One of those few nights in a person's life where fate was determined that things would change for the worse. While outside strays hunted shelter and lights flickered, a world was unveiled beyond the comprehension of three young minds. It was the night they truly discovered what lurked in the laughing abyss that was the Internet.

The Internet. God help us all.

"Five, four, three, two…" Freddie counted down before giving the signal that they were on the air. The show was starting, a special show that they had planned out for literally days in advance.

"I'm Carly!"

"I'm Sam!"

They chorused their words together as the logo flashed up on the screen of their viewers' monitors: "And this is iCarly!"

"Now tonight is going to be a very special show!" Sam said to the camera.

"More special than the kid with the helmet in our math class who eats his own pimples!" Sam said, much to the feigned disgust of Carly. "Tonight, you, the viewers, will have an opportunity to chat with us for the whole hour via live chat. We have the chat room that is normally next to the viewing screen up on the monitor you see behind us!"

Sam turned pointing with her thumb at the monitor, which indeed was displaying a chat room full of iCarly watchers. Carly took over to finish the rest of Sam's piece. "You can suggest new skits we can do, ask us questions, recommend us some cool websites or just give us feedback on what stuff you like and dislike about our show!"

"Yeah… except for the 'dislike' part." Sam added, giving a joking dirty look to the camera. After a brief awkward silence, Carly spoke up. "Let's have a look at the chat room!"

Carly and Sam took a few steps over to the monitor displaying the chat room and got the show started. For the first ten minutes, things went smoothly. A few dumbass questions pertaining to Carly and/or Sam's respective love lives were tossed out there for consideration. There were skit ideas that were outwardly considered but secretly designated as stupid between the three, with few exceptions. Occasionally someone said something mean and rude to get Sam all worked up. Then a user named Poolcloser69 suggested just one word: "goatse."

"Hey, Poolcloser," Sam began, cutting off 69 since she was the only one in the room who knew the number's double meaning, "what are you talking about?"

Poolcloser responded three seconds later, "goatse dot bz" Sam looked confused until Carly jumped in to save her. "Oh, he's recommending us a website! You're the first one to do that today for some reason, Mr. 69!" Sam rolled her eyes at her friend's poor knowledge of sexual lingo.

"I wonder what the website's about." the blonde girl mused. "Must be goats or something."

Freddie announced, "I'll pull it up right now in another tab. Goatse dot bz, right?"

"Yeah," Poolcloser typed.

"That's a strange url. Normally they end with dot com or dot org or something-"

"How about 'dot shut up and type?'" Sam snapped. Not one of her most clever comebacks.

"Okay, okay, typing it in."

Carly, Sam and Freddie gathered around the laptop across the room as the picture loaded. At first, they could do nothing more except gape (heh heh) in horror as they gazed into the horrible website. It featured a man's anus stretched to proportions large enough to fit several baseballs. Their eyes became glazed over for a brief moment; shock was setting in.

Freddie gathered enough strength in him to press the little red X button in the corner. It closed out the window but left an imprint forever in their minds. Carly turned over to the camera. She was obviously disturbed.

"We'll… we'll be right back. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of Spencer playing Ring Toss with the peg glued to the ceiling." The video began playing as the feed was cut, much to the chagrin of the people in the chat room. Or, a few of them at least. A few others were entertained by the ring toss.

"We… we can't take website requests anymore," Freddie said, trying to ignore what felt like earthworms burrowing around in his veins. Up until just a few seconds, the boy had no idea something so disgusting could exist.

"No, we promised," Sam protested. "I mean, yeah, that was gross, but it can't hurt us to check at least a few more!"

"My mom checks my web history pretty much weekly, Sam! If she sees this on it she'll never let me near a computer again, if she even lives through seeing… THAT in the first place!"

"Oh, my God, I am so sick of your fucking mom and her-"

Carly was fed up. Despite the shock of hearing her friend curse like that, her nerves were wracked like never before. She wasn't in the mood for their arguing. "Enough! Both of you need to calm down!"

Freddie sighed. "What do you think, Carly? Should we keep taking website recommendations?"

"Yes," Carly said without thought. "If one comes up that looks bad or comes from that pool guy, we won't take it. We'll just pretend we didn't see it. But we've promised our viewers for the past week that we would do this, and I don't want to stop just because of one person trying to spoil everything."

"Yeah, there's a lot of really gross stuff on the internet that people spread around as jokes," Sam muttered, almost to herself. "Up until just a few minutes ago, I thought I'd seen it all…"

Sam, a little shaken but strong enough to keep her cool in a way her friends couldn't, addressed the audience. "We haven't been paying attention to the chat since we went off, so if you have another question, comment or request, go ahead and repeat it… NOW!"

The chat room's first website recommendation after the break came immediately after Sam got finished speaking. It was from a user named mudkipsftw. It read: "lemonparty."

TO BE CONTINUED…

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